1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image recognition system, an image recognition method, and a machine readable medium storing thereon an image recognition program. More particularly, the present invention relates to an image recognition system, an image recognition method and a machine readable medium storing thereon an image recognition program which recognize an object included in a captured image.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, an image recognition system is known which attempts improvement of safety of a motor driver by recognizing surrounding environment from an image captured by a camera equipped in a vehicle, such as a automobile, and by notifying the driver or the like of the recognition result. However, since the recognition processing requires great amount of time when the image recognition is performed to the whole image captured by the camera, the recognition cannot be performed very accurately.
Then, a technology which reduces the time for the recognition processing is known by performing the recognition processing only in an area recognized as a sidewalk when detecting a white line on the ground from the image captured in visible radiation region, recognizing a sidewalk area, and recognizing a subject from the image captured in infrared region (cf. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-362302).
However, like the above-mentioned technology when performing the image recognition only in a sidewalk area, an object which the driver should pay attention the most, e.g., a person who walks in a driveway, cannot be recognized and it prevents the safety improvement of the system.